Drug dealer will be on jail's work release program

A co-defendant in the sales of morphine and heroin will be spending 30 days in the Huron County Jail on the work release program.

Chelsey M. McCullough, 23, of rural New London, will serve the jail term as part of her two years of intense probation. The former Norwalk resident also must pay $160 to the Norwalk Police Department to cover the cost of drug testing.

Huron County Prosecutor Russell Leffler had recommended visiting Common Pleas Judge Thomas Pokorny sentence McCullough to 90 days in jail. The judge suspended McCullough's driver's license for six months, but back-dated the start time to March.

"She couldn't go to prison because she didn't have the pre-existing conditions for it," Leffler said, referring to the defendant not having any prior felony convictions.

A jury, after two full days of testimony, found McCullough guilty of two counts each of selling heroin and morphine. The jurors deliberated for about two hours and 20 minutes.

McCullough's co-defendant and her former live-in boyfriend, Scott A. Shuker, 27, of 16782 Township Road 136, Bellevue, was scheduled to be sentenced today.

On Sept. 21 -- one day after McCullough's guilty verdicts and the day after Shuker's 27th birthday, Shuker pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting the sale of methadone. In a plea deal, Leffler agreed to dismiss several other drug-trafficking charges.

A confidential informant testified she paid McCullough and Shuker $40 for two pills of morphine March 12 in the Rite Aid parking lot. Two other transactions happened in the West Seminary Street apartment where McCullough and Shuker were living at the time. The informant, who met McCullough through a mutual friend, set up the transactions through text messages.